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A Precedent for Press Freedom

Faced with prosecutorial demands to know journalists’ confidential sources, judges bow too often to the government’s wishes without considering carefully enough whether a need for the information to make the government’s case outweighs the needs and rights of reporters and an informed public.

In the most recent such case, though, a federal trial judge struck a blow for the freedom of the press and the public’s right to know. She rebuffed an ill-conceived effort by prosecutors from the Justice Department to require the author of a 2006 book about the Central Intelligence Agency to provide testimony revealing a confidential source. (The ruling has special resonance for us because the book’s author, James Risen, is a reporter for The New York Times.)

The ruling was a departure from some other prominent cases involving government demands that journalists disclose their sources, in which judges failed to adequately scrutinize the government’s stated rationale or weigh the serious constitutional harm in impeding the gathering of newsworthy information the public needs to hold powerful institutions and individuals accountable.

Last week, Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., declined to rubber-stamp government lawyers’ claims that it was necessary to compel Mr. Risen to reveal a confidential source when he testifies in the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former C.I.A. employee accused of leaking classified information. The government says Mr. Sterling provided material for a chapter in Mr. Risen’s book detailing a botched effort by the agency to sabotage Iranian nuclear research in 2000.

Judge Brinkema wisely accepted Mr. Risen’s proposal for sharply limiting what prosecutors may ask him. As in her earlier ruling quashing a grand jury subpoena for Mr. Risen’s testimony, the judge was persuaded that the prosecution had sufficient evidence to prove its case without forcing a journalist to choose between going to jail and betraying a source’s trust, which Mr. Risen said he would not do.

Notably, too, she found that the qualified reporter’s privilege to protect confidential sources, grounded in the First Amendment, applies in criminal cases, not just in civil actions. In rejecting the government’s exaggerated claim of necessity, the judge respected the public’s strong interest in robust investigative reporting.

A version of this editorial appears in print on August 4, 2011, on Page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: A Precedent for Press Freedom. Today's Paper|Subscribe